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Romania has been on the fringes of Yiddish research until now. A new book by Natalie Zemon Davis shows that one of the very first studies of Jewish dialects was published in Romania at the end of the 19th century. Her book "Listening to the languages of the people: Lazar Sainean on Romanian, Yiddish, and French" tells the dramatic life story of an important Romanian philologist of Jewish origin, who made an important contribution to Jewish linguistics. Zemon Davis is world-renowned for her studies of French culture from the early modern era. The name of the philologist Lazar Seignanu (Sainéan, in French) was well known to her because of his thorough research of the language of François Rabelais, the great French writer of the 16th century. But it was a surprise to her that Seinian also wrote about Yiddish, and she began to research his biography. Her new book is a research work that combines an individual's life with his era's cultural and political history. (translated from Yiddish)
Reviewed book: 
Listening to the Languages of the People book cover
Author: 
Natalie Zemon Davis
ISBN: 
978-963-386-593-4
cloth
$65.00 / €55.00 / £47.00